Chars by Pieman

Pieman offers us an excellent puzzle this week - as you would expect from
Pieman who nevers seems to produce anything else. The puzzle features a superb
piece of grid construction and some extremely tough but fair clues. Gregson
was particularly taken with the number of & lit clues, probably the hardest
for a setter to write.

The theme is to do with benevolent creatures who help secretly with the
housework. Mind you, Gregson's experience of chars is that they are rarely
benevolent and never help secretly!

The first two chars are to be found in the answers to two clues lacking a
definition - 10A KOBOLD and 17D DOBBIE. The third char appears in the misprints
in across clues - BROWNIE. The fourth char is found in the misprints in down
answers taken in column order - LUBBER FIEND. What the lubber fiend requires
as payment is found in the correct versions of the down misprints - BOWL
OF CREAM; verification of this appears in the Chambers entry for
Lob-lie-by-the-fire, an alternative name for a lubber fiend. The ninth letter
of lubber fiend is the same as the ninth letter of bowl of cream, and so
the E in 7D DORSE is misprinted by itself. Taking every ninth letter in the
grid, reading left to right and top to bottom, spells out DOMESTIC TASKS,
to be highlighted in the finished grid.

In the following explanations the corrections for misprints in across clues
are shown in [square brackets], as are the misprints to be made when entering
down answers.